1. Field of the invention
This invention relates to the field of waste incineration. More specifically it relates to medical waste incinerators that have 100% burn efficiency, no interior metal parts, and two separate burners.
2. Description of the related art
Disposal of medical wastes is an increasing problem in our society. Various way of dealing with this have been proposed: encapsulating in resin (U.S. Pat. No. 4,919,569), heating and encapsulating in heat activated plastic (U.S. Pat. No. 4,992,217), grinding waste and adding sterilizing fluid (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,979,683; 5,035,367), crushing (U.S. Pat. No. 5,035,367) and irradiation (U.S. Pat. No. 5,035,858). However, incineration remains the major method of destroying medical and other waste.
Incineration of materials has several problems. Build up of slag on the furnace walls can clog outlets, and decrease efficiency. Various methods have been tried to solve these problems: adding metals with high melting points to reduce adherence of slag (U.S. Pat. No. 4,953,481), forcing air or mechanical means through ports to unclog them (U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,867,909; 3,900,011). Likewise, various configurations of incinerators have been used. Many use grates (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,006,693; 4,321,879; 4,430,948)--but grates may burn up, break, or become clogged. Caps over outlets and ports hinder cleanout and may break. Ports in the floor or sidewalls of many incinerators are subject to clogging with ash, melted plastic or slag which interferes with air flow and burning and requires shutdown of the unit to clean out the ports. Air tubes may be inserted into the chamber, but are usually rapidly destroyed by the corrosive action of acids in the wastes and by the intense heat.
Medical and biohazardous waste is often a special problem since it is usually non-homogeneous waste; i.e. it may include liquids and/or solids such as paper, plastic, fabric, biological tissues, metal, glass, and the like. Many incinerators do not fully burn such mixed composition waste.